I pop in on Memri, a service that translates news from the Middle East into English, every once in a while. Often it is a difficult read because of the hatred of the West. But here is one that gives me hope. The author, a Qatari intellectual, calls for non-radical Muslims to admit that the 9/11 terrorists were Muslim and “they carried out the operation because of their belief that it was Jihad and martyrdom. They were our young people and our sons, and they were our responsibility.” He rails against conspiracy theories (they are common amongst Muslims) and calls for some realism.

This is the kind of thing that is necessary to bring terrorism under control. I think we need to really focus on Israel and make some concrete changes that help the Palestinians’ quality of life improve. We need to provide humanitarian aid to hurting Muslim regions that doesn’t come from the US government, it needs to come from American volunteer organizations. We need to hear from moderate Muslims calling for sanity. In short, to end terrorism we don’t need regime change exclusively (it was necessary in Afghanistan), we also need to work to cut off the supply of volunteers. Hate and fear drives a young person to engage in suicide bombing. Conspiracy theories feed that regardless of the facts and there isn’t much we can do externally about that but we could make them more difficult to believe by actually being the good guys once again.